St Pancras Old Church
a hardy tree and a poet's grave
One of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England, free, with a romantic churchyard where Mary Shelley courted her poet and an ash tree ringed by hundreds of crammed gravestones.
Free to visit · Somers Town · King's Cross St Pancras · NW1 1UL
Opening: Churchyard daily · church open select hours
A few minutes behind the roar of King's Cross and St Pancras lies a pocket of deep history that almost no commuter visits. St Pancras Old Church is reckoned to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England, and the church and its leafy churchyard are free to wander.
The churchyard is famous for two things. It was here that the young Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, courted the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley at her mother's graveside, dreaming up the world that would become Frankenstein. And when the railways cut through the burial ground in the 1860s, a young architect named Thomas Hardy, later the novelist, was given the grim job of clearing graves, and stacked hundreds of displaced headstones in tight rings around an ash tree, now known as the Hardy Tree.
It is a quiet, slightly melancholy and deeply atmospheric free green space, layered with stories, a world away from the stations a stone's throw to the south.
Getting there: On Pancras Road behind St Pancras station, a short walk from King's Cross.
Best time to go: A weekday for solitude in the churchyard, or autumn when the gardens are at their most atmospheric.
Insider tip: Look for the Hardy Tree, the ash ringed by stacked gravestones, though check its current state as the old tree has suffered in recent years. The whole churchyard is a free, story-rich pause minutes from the King's Cross chaos.
Official site: https://posp.co.uk
Free things to do in London · London Free Guide